Jake and BJ: Smile
by Davis Family Fan
Summary: Deja vu of the worst sort once again connect two women. This is a conversation that should have happened, but never will. Please take a moment to leave your thoughts and/or outrage. Thanks for reading.


I feel the need to rectify Guza's many errors. I'll be posting a series of different Jake one-shots concerning how his death has impacted the various people in Port Charles on many levels Guza seems to neglect.

Please Review.

**UNEDITED.  
**

**Smile**

**Elizabeth**

Blond hair. Blue eyes. The pinkest lips. He loved motorcycles. Yellow ones. What else? He loved race cars as well. And ice cream. He loved that, too. She was making a memory. A list of all the things her beautiful little boy loved. A mental catalog of his existence.

- "Jake?"

A tear trickled down her cheek as she held his tiny hand.

- "Jake?"

She tightened the grip she held onto it in the hopes that he might feel her touch and awaken. She held onto him hoping that perhaps if he knew that it was her beside him, he would squeeze her hand to let her know that he was alright… that he would let her know that she did _not_ have to make the decision they had expected her to make.

- "Honey, it's Mommy. I need you to open your eyes for me, okay? I need you to let these doctors know that you're just fine."

But she knew that he never would. She was a nurse. Her brother was a doctor. Her good friends were surgeons. They had all said the same thing to her. There was too much damage.

- "_Please_—"

While they had thought it best to keep her from seeing him before they took him into surgery, the memory of seeing him lying motionless on the pavement had already been engrained into her memory.

- "You _have_ to wake up for me."

Blond matted hair. Blood coming from more places than she could even figure out. His eyes remained closed hiding the depths of blue behind them. His pink lips were also bloodied. She had already seen from what they had so terribly wanted to protect her. Her beautiful little boy was but a memory.

- "I don't know _how_ I'm supposed to live without you."

She stood at the doorway. She felt guilty for intruding on such a private moment between a mother and a child. And still, she felt as though she could not leave. She felt compelled to be with the young woman whom she had watched grow from a naive teen into a flourishing young woman.

- "Elizabeth?"

She had been there for the woman on what she had thought was the most difficult moment in her life: her rape. She had sat with her, spoken to her, and had offered her a listening ear if that was what she had wanted. She had been there for her because in some ways, she had seen herself, a better self than what she had actually been at her age, in the younger woman.

- "I…"

She did not know what to say. She did not enter the room with any hopes of commiserating the unfortunate collision of a terrible and painful past with the devastating present. She simply wanted to offer her support because _only _she knew the pain that tore through her.

- "I wish… I wish I could tell you _something_ that would make this situation easier—"

Easier. As though where Elizabeth sat were remotely _easy_. Easier connoted that, on some level, the decision to allow a piece of her son to be removed from his tiny body and given to another child so that she might live was simple. It was not. It was the most difficult decision of her life because in giving that child life, she would solidify her son's death. _Nothing_ anyone could have said in that moment, the next day, or even ten years down the line when her son would be nothing but a skeleton in a tiny coffin and a mere memory of a beautiful little boy, would have made this situation _easier._

- "I keep replaying that moment in my head, Bobbie—"

Her eyes welled with tears as she imagined the scene replay in her mind. She could almost feel herself in that moment once again, but as much as she wanted to turn around in that exact moment when her son had managed to open the door and sneak out without her knowledge, her body would not allow her the action. Like a movie stuck on a loop at one frame, the moment replayed itself in her mind… over… and over… and over again.

- "He was playing on the steps by the door, and—"

She used the back of her hand that continued to hold onto his shirt, the one that she folded and unfolded while she had waited for the news that her son would be alright, to wipe her tears.

- "And I wonder to myself, _'why_ would you allow your child to play by the door?' Or '_why_ wouldn't you have made sure that the chain were on the door?' I just—"

She kept her eyes glued to the little boy whose face was unrecognizable to her, but whose touch was that of her beautiful son she had known for four short years. Thinking of all that she had done wrong in the last year and a half of his life, in being with his uncle all the while crushing his father's heart, to the last few minutes of his life, in disregarding the dangers of leaving him unattended while she checked the results that would affirm his younger brother's identity, she could not help but feel as though she had cost him _his_ own identity. The very life she had given, she neglectfully cost.

- "I want to _scream_, Bobbie. I want to lie down in the middle of the street in the hopes that _maybe_ if I can redo what's happened, then it would be _me_ in this bed, instead of him. I want to—"

There was so much that she _wanted_, but there was nothing that could be done. Her son was gone. And _that_ she could not accept.

- "_HOW_ am I supposed to say _goodbye_ to him? _How_ am I supposed to sit down and sign a piece of paper that'll allow pieces of him to be given away? How am I supposed to say that it's okay that he's gone?"

For the first time Bobbie completely entered the room. Dragging a chair from the corner, she sat beside the younger woman.

- "Nothing will ever make it okay that he's gone."

She wrapped her arm around her, feeling herself catapulted back to that awful time in her life. She wondered if she could handle such a pain, but given the despair that radiated from the sobbing mother's body, she knew she could.

- "When Tony and I made the decision to—"

She did not want to say 'turn off the machines;' it seemed too cold and distant. Then again, that was, in effect, what they had done. Long before they had made their decision to shut off life support, their little girl had already soared high above them and into another world. The child that had lain before them unable to breathe on her own, feel their touch and teardrops that fell to her skin, and was as lifeless as a ragdoll, was not their daughter; she was a mere shell of the vibrant person the girl had been.

- "When we decided that Maxie should have BJ's heart, we did so knowing that that was what she would've wanted."

Releasing an audible sob, Elizabeth pressed Jake's hand to her cheek. _This_ was not what her four year old boy would have wanted.

- "But he doesn't even _know _Josslyn! He doesn't know _what_ he wants, Bobbie! Not about something like this. He just knows he likes strawberries with his cereal, yellow motorcycles, and ice cream. He knows that Cam is his older brother, that Aiden is his baby brother, that I'm his Mommy, and Lucky is his Daddy. _That's _what he knows!"

And she was his aunt. This little four year old boy was her nephew, but the little girl who needed his help was her granddaughter. But, she did not come to Elizabeth's side to beg for her grandchild's life; she went to her knowing that the woman already knew what she would do. She went to her side to support her, not to coerce her.

- "I sat in the same position as you did, Elizabeth. I held my daughter's hand. I willed her back to me. I_ begged_ God for a miracle."

She ran her fingers along the edge of the blanket that covered the boy.

- "I sat here, much like you're doing right now, and I thought about the ways I could've turned back the clock. Maybe I could've kept her from school? Maybe I could've driven her myself? Maybe I could've—"

She stopped. Should, coulda, wouldas would not change what had already occurred.

- "And then I closed my eyes, and I took myself back to that time, just like you're doing with Jake. I took myself back to that time and did all of those things that I should've could've and would've done had I known what I later learned would happen. And you know what?"

Continuing to envision herself attempting to change the circumstances that led her to this very moment, Elizabeth finally turned to look at the women.

- "What?"

The sad smile on Bobbie's face spoke volumes of the lingering pain and effects of the girl's death that dwelled within her.

- "I could not, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't move past that day. It was as though regardless of the changes that I made that day, nothing I did would help me, even in my mind envision my life with her _after _that point. She was… _gone._"

She could already feel the same occurrence happening within her own thoughts. She could not turn around in time to stop Jake from running out of the house. She could not imagine the dinner that she would have had with her sons. She could not see his face smiling at her while he sloppily ate his spaghetti. She could not imagine anything because it had all stopped in an instant.

- "When will this pain go away?"

Never.

- "I want to tell you that it does, honey, but that would be a lie. There'll be days where all you do is think about him. Then, there'll be days where it's only for a few hours at a time. Then an hour. And then in passing. But then, there'll be a moment when you pass something or someone that'll remind you of him, or the person he was or would become, and… you'll lose it. You'll lose it because it'll feel like the very first day all over again."

Blinded by her tears, Elizabeth shook her head; the pain was already unbearable. She could not imagine living this way for the remainder of her life. But, she did not have a choice. This was the hand life had dealt her. Whether or not she wanted to, for her children's sake, she had to continue to play life's cruel game.

- "It _hurts_—"

Feeling her own pain resurfacing, Bobbie shut her eyes; the image of BJ had taken form where Jake laid.

- "But it'll get better. Right now, it feels as though all you'll have are bad days, Elizabeth, but I _promise_ you, you'll eventually have better days than worse."

She thought about her other children. They were too young to understand what they had lost. She could not remain this shell of a woman if she were to be the mother they knew her to be.

- "Will I… will I ever _smile_ again?"

Bobbie knew all too well the pain to even attempt such a thing, but she also knew the joy of once again being able to feel some sense of happiness return to her.

- "You will."

She kissed the top of the woman's head.

- "Yes, you will. The pictures of your beautiful child that you once cried yourself to sleep holding, you'll smile at the memories that caused you to take the picture. You'll think about the things about your beautiful little boy that brought so much joy in your life with happiness instead of pain and sorrow. You'll celebrate his life, Elizabeth. Your signs life will _not _always be defined by how it ended. I promise you that."

She covered Elizabeth's hand, the one that held Jake's lifeless one, with her own.

- "By deciding to let your son go, honey, you will _always _harbor this pain in your heart. But, this is just one moment in his life. He's only had four years of life, that's true, but thankfully most of it is filled with more happiness than this pain. You'll smile again _because_ of that."

Without even realizing it, Elizabeth released her son's hand and held entirely onto Bobbie's.

- "This child's life was a happy one. You were a _wonderful_ mother to him, Elizabeth. He _loved _you. And _that's _what'll help you get up in the morning when you feel as though you can't. The memory of his laughter will put a giggle into your voice. You'll be fine, honey. You'll get through this."

She turned back to look at her son one last time before nodding as she fell into Bobbie's arms. Even if all the woman had said were true, she still did not know how she would be able to say goodbye.


End file.
